Posts in Room Reveals

ONE ROOM CHALLENGE Week V - Exciting Announcement!

If you’re here for the first time, welcome! I’m Jana Bek, an Ann Arbor based interior designer with an emerging lifestyle line of home décor, textiles, & lighting. I have a love for bright colors, bold prints, and designing spaces & home décor that help transport you to your dream destination.

I’m so excited to be participating in my fifth season of One Room Challenge & and a huge thanks to Linda of Calling it Home for organizing!

This round, I’m taking on our kitchen, it currently has a dark 90s dated look, that's completely out of sync with the airy spaces that surround it.

We are in the final stretch & we are thrilled with how it’s coming together! We’ve only got two items left to finish; the floating shelves and building up the top of the fridge.

The original plan was to paint the floating shelves white but when the cut shelves were set in place, I loved the texture and warmth that the natural wood provided. It’s not a high-end wood but I don’t care as the color is exactly what I would have chosen (aka it’s Pine & it’s fine)!

Secondly, I’ve always been disturbed by the header on our fridge. It wasn’t that it didn’t reach the ceiling (with 10’ ceilings that didn’t bother me so much) but the trim looked so wimpy. Since we were painting anyway, we are building up the height of the header about 8” then adding a classic 4” crown molding. Here’s where we are at now, and an inspiration photo of the process I found on Pinterest, original image can be found here. I know it will look so much more substantial!

Now for the final touches, including an exciting announcement, that will really bring the space to life!

If you follow me on Instagram or have read previous blog posts you know that I am an avid art collector & enjoy discovering new artists. So I’m delighted to share that I’m now offering a curated selection of my favorite Artfully Walls pieces on the site!

I've long been a fan of AW , below is Boy on Horse by Andrew Jacona & Three Palms by Jan Weiss in our home & Atlanta apartment:

To add interest & color to the kitchen, I’m excited to layer these works onto our floating shelves:

Clockwise from top right:

Bananas's Ripening / The Almond Flower / Emerald / A Child's Play / Tzealim

We are a bit behind schedule so wish us luck & I hope you’ll tune in next Thursday for the big reveal!

In the interim, you can find my scheming on Instagram & pinterest.

Be sure to follow along with the Wednesday group below with my fellow linking participants!

Room RevealsJana BekMay 4, 2017 Comments

ONE ROOM CHALLENGE - ANN ARBOR KITCHEN MAKEOVER - Final Stretch

I’m so excited to be participating in my fifth season of One Room Challenge & and a huge thanks to Linda of Calling it Home for organizing!

Here’s a look at my most recent past ORC’s (and you can tour all of them in links below):

Home Office / Breakfast Nook & Great Room/ Atlanta Apartment / Living Room

This round, I’m taking on our kitchen, it currently has a dark 90s dated look, that's completely out of sync with the airy spaces that surround it.

We have made fantastic progress this past week! This week I’m chatting about the pieces that are rounding out the design & making the space flow with the rest of our home:

- Lighting

- Counter stools

- Paint

Lighting

I choose the Eldridge pendants by Ballard Designs, in bronze, for a number of reasons. With our open floor plan, you can see some bit of every room, as well as the staircase, all at once. We have beautiful iron stair railings and I knew the bronze pendant finish would compliment them beautifully. Then, in the adjacent living room and breakfast nook, we have statement chandeliers so the clean lines of the Eldridge pendants are a nice transition between the other spaces.

This is the only photo I have at the ready with to show the stair railings (of course, my day-to-day attire!)

We hung the pendants late Wednesday night and I was finally assured that everything would come together! The scale of them really helps to frame up the kitchen too.

Counter Stools

I’m thrilled that our kitchen will finally be worthy of Dayna counter stools! We have the matching chairs in our adjoining breakfast nook so the spaces will finally start to speak to each other. I’m all about mixing up seating but when you see four rooms at once, some coordination is a welcome sight! I’m going to reupholster the seats in our Aqua Shagreen fabric to compliment the tile (I always enjoy an additional pop of color)!

Paint

I took a great amount of time researching the perfect white for our remaining kitchen cabinets.

Farrow & Ball has the most comprehensive website, with the most excited & engaged customers, of any paint company (and most companies in general).

So after considering the green tones in the granite counters, soon-to-come backsplash, & perusing all of the helpful photos & color descriptions on their website, I landed on their James White. The shade is an off-white with just enough warmth to tie in the wood floors and counters. We are almost done painting and I’m thrilled, the color is fantastic! Our painter, Bill, had never used F&B paints and kept complimenting the quality. Having recently used their paint in our living room, and becoming fast fans ourselves; hearing Bill resolve that it’s the best paint he’s worked with was such fun news. I’m excited to share his praise with the fantastic team over at F&B!

I can see the finish line and we are super excited (& tired)!

Our final to-dos are:

Finishing grouting (fun fact I've grouted the whole kitchen thus far to speed things up, I've become great and never want to see grout again!)

Reupholstering the counter stool cushions,

Building the shelves, & cleaning like crazy!

I hope you’ll tune in next week for our final updates!

In the interim, you can find my scheming on Instagram & pinterest.

Be sure to follow along with the Wednesday group below with my fellow linking participants!

Room RevealsJana BekApril 28, 2017 Comment

ONE ROOM CHALLENGE - ANN ARBOR KITCHEN MAKEOVER - Honing Kitchen Counters

I’m so excited to be participating in my fifth season of One Room Challenge & and a huge thanks to Linda of Calling it Home for organizing!

Here’s a look at my most recent past ORC’s (and you can tour all of them in links below):

Home Office / Breakfast Nook & Great Room/ Atlanta Apartment / Living Room

This round, I’m taking on our kitchen, it currently has a dark 90s dated look, that's completely out of sync with the airy spaces that surround it.

I’ve yet to mention, that one of my husband’s and my favorite things to do is cook together so this renovation is long overdue! I found this photo when looking for interesting “before” photos, it makes me so happy, we have fun:

Now for the major progress we’ve had in the past week!

First, we are about a third of the way done installing our gorgeous Fireclay backsplash and it’s looking incredible, so much lighter & brighter!

A side-by-side to illustrate:

The other game-changer was honing the shiny granite counters, we are thrilled that we pulled the trigger to refresh the granite!

When we started this project, we thought that with all of the other updates, we could live with the sheen. However, we knew it would not look quite right, and that it was ultimately necessary for a ‘finished’ transformation.

I had become enamored with the idea of getting them honed on-site when I stumbled upon Amanda Hessar’s kitchen renovation a few months back and learned it was possible. Here's a look at here own killer kitchen transformation, be sure to check out the full reveal here.

Luckily, my research led me to a highly recommended master fabricator, Brian Keller, with enough experience and skill to be up for the task.

There is little information out there so I hope my learnings may be helpful. Many craftsman are not comfortable doing this on-site; this was actually Brian’s first time honing on location. The process entails a series of wet sanding with various grades of diamond pads; slowly grating off the sheen while ensuring the surface remains level. From the start, Brian admitted he was extremely detail oriented (sometimes to a fault) and I do not know how one could be successful in this task without that quality. The prep work alone – protecting our lower cabinets and portion of newly tiled walls – took great time & care. The price initially sounded expensive ($1,500 for our 60 sq. feet of counter) but it’s very time consuming. Brian spent 16-17 hours on the process and with the amount of tools required, we learned that the price is reasonable, and it proved to be an awesome resolution for our dated counters! When you think about the comparison for replacing, it’s money well spent.

Before:

a look at the process and the matte "after" (which really doesn't show how beautiful it looks):

That’s really it for this week! I am excited to delve into the fun details (new lighting, stools, paint picks) next Thursday and hope you’ll tune in for our progress updates!

In the interim, you can find my scheming on Instagram & pinterest.

Be sure to follow along with the Wednesday group below with my fellow linking participants!

Room RevealsJana BekApril 19, 2017 Comments

One Room CHALLENGE - Ann Arbor Kitchen Makeover Tile Talk

I’m so excited to be participating in my fifth season of One Room Challenge & and a huge thanks to Linda of Calling it Home for organizing!

Here’s a look at my most recent past ORC’s (and you can tour all of them in links below):

Home Office / Breakfast Nook & Great Room/ Atlanta Apartment / Living Room

This round, I’m taking on our kitchen, it currently has a dark 90s dated look, that's completely out of sync with the bright and airy spaces that surround it.

The granite counters are staying, so the new tile for the backsplash was key to our kitchen’s success. It had to be light & beautiful. The wrong pick would just be another 90s version of what we already have.

I immediately knew I wanted to incorporate Fire Clay Tile into the design! They have the perfect line of stunning tile, and a great company story.

Justina Blakeney's Master Bath featuring FCT Deep Blue Hex tile

Each tile is made by hand and that level of craftsmanship really shows. They strive to be as sustainable as possible by consistently using recycled materials & local resources; & their customer service is absolutely top notch (with a great trade program to boot)! They also offer free samples, which not surprisingly resulted in the trickiest decision: choosing between so many beautiful options.

I was able to narrow my selection to a few pieces that fit well with our space, but since my photographer assesses color all day, Marta's opinion was the deciding factor. We went with Kiwi; a pale, yet vibrant shade of green that will beautifully complement the tones in our granite counters.

The original plan was to paint all of the cabinets, but the tile selection proved to be the real game changer leading us to replace the upper cabinets with floating shelves.

Now the tile will go all the way to the ceiling!

It’s going to be a ton of work, but it will be so bright, & make for a complete transformation. Here’s an inspiration image of the look we're trying to achieve:

Coffee Bar in FCT prickley pear glass tile, photo by Malcolm Fearnon

We’ve already made a lot of progress, the demo is complete, the drywall has been repaired, and we're starting to build the floating shelves. The kitchen already looks brighter!

Another awesome bonus about FCT? Since they hand craft each tile, you have the option of glazing or bull-nosing the tile edge so you can forgo a separate trim! My choice: a 3”x6” tile, in a classic subway pattern with a glazed edge. This will be a clean and elegant look.

I know I’ve gotten you pretty hyped up about Fire Clay Tile & you are in luck! They’ve just partnered with two other awesome companies (Joybird & Twyla) in an incredible $5,000 giveaway! Head on over for a chance to kick start your own room makeover!